Osmosis
by Anime Girl23
Summary: Something in Neal changed after they almost lost him in the woods. He was different and she'd brushed it off, calling it his way of dealing until she couldn't. Not with the truth staring her in the face. Neal/Emma [Swanfire]


As always with my fics, just assume that everything is AU after Quiet Minds. Any allusion to canon after that is purely accidental.

Osmosis  
One-shot

Something had gone wrong.

In hindsight, Emma wondered if she should have realized sooner. Maybe she would have if she hadn't been so distracted with Zelena and, then, with Hook. Henry had mentioned it to her once over dinner, just a simple question of _do you think Dad is okay_ , but she'd brushed it off.

"He's fine," she'd told him. "He's got weird ways of dealing with things."

Back then, it made sense. He had almost died-again-and knowing him, she doubted he'd dealt with the first time before the second one happened.

When they were younger, Neal had operated under this method of avoidance and jokes that would drive her crazy just as much as she found it kind of endearing. The older he got, the more determined he'd seemed to avoid certain topics, but he'd been more up-front about others. A voice in the back of her head whispered that, before, he'd been clear about them and his feelings for her, but even that had changed.

He'd pulled back from her, avoiding her like he used to avoid the topic of his father and his past. Smiles that used to look so natural and normal started looking forced and nervous and…

God. He'd known. He must have known.

She sighed, staring down at the shining metal on the table in front of her. The dagger, the same jagged blade like the one that had Gold's name across it, but this one was different. A double. A second dagger, coming into existence like it was normal when it _wasn't_.

Normal wasn't a Dark One's dagger with _Baelfire_ engraved across it.

Neal had known. The second it appeared, he'd known, she realized now. She'd seen him stiffen and that scared look come across his face. They hadn't seen him since, but when she walked into the station and saw it sitting calmly on her desk…

She hadn't touched it. It needed to be hidden, put away somewhere like Gold must have done with his, but she couldn't bring herself to take her hand to it. She didn't want to see what it weighed or how cold the metal was. Touching it meant testing it and testing it… Testing meant admitting it. If it worked and the dagger could summon Neal, it meant admitting that he'd become a Dark One.

Her heart hammered in her chest as her stomach rolled and she swallowed back the nausea rising in her. The thought forced her into her chair, her legs shaking too much to support her.

It didn't make _sense_. Gold was alive. He was fine and she'd seen him perform the same magic he always did. Nothing had changed, but everything had changed at the same time and- _fuck_ -this wasn't happening. It was a dream. It had to be a dream.

She pinched herself.

She didn't wake up.

She let out a breath, trembling and scared. She should have called someone. Her parents. Maybe even Regina or Gold. She definitely should have called Neal, but who needed a phone when she had something better? Something worse?

Baelfire. Neal. Two names, but one person. This dagger made a third name and a different person and she had no idea who this one was or who he'd be. Things had changed in the last few months, but she hadn't thought about it until it was staring her right in the face.

She pushed her chair back, putting a couple feet of distance between her and the dagger like it would make things better, but it didn't. The different angle made the light catch the metal and she watched as it cast a rainbow onto the wall to her left. It forced a snort out of her that sounded shaken and bordering hysterical. The Dark One dagger making rainbows. Too innocent for something that dark.

Neal wasn't, though. He'd never been dark, not even with the magic he'd used to bring his father back, because he'd had pure intentions with it. Family. Home. He'd never been perfect-and she'd never expected him to be-but he'd been _good_. He'd been so unnervingly good with that tinge of mischief in his eyes and in his smiles that made her fall for him in the first place.

He was one of the best people she'd ever met in her life.

Now…

She stared at the dagger for hours, too scared to move towards it but too scared to move away. The sun shifted until it wasn't casting that little rainbow anymore and she sighed, relieved, when she noticed. No more fake innocence. No more lies. Just her and the dagger.

Somehow, that didn't make her feel much better.

Her phone went off and she jumped, her foot crashing into a file cabinet, ankle bone first. Pain shot up her leg, throbbing, but she ignored it as she snatched her cell off the desk like any proximity to the dagger would contaminate it.

 _Gonna have dinner at my mom's tonight._

Henry.

God. Henry…

She dropped her phone, not sure if she even replied, and her eyes locked onto the dagger again. His father was a…

Her heart in her throat, she reached for the dagger, hesitating before she took it in her hand. It felt heavy. Cold. She felt a shudder rush through her so strong that she almost dropped it, like whatever magic she had in her was fighting against the darkness that came with the knife.

She wondered if Neal felt someone pick it up.

She pressed her eyes closed, forcing her breath to slow, and opened them again, the dagger held out in front of her. "Neal. Come here." Her voice shook as much as her body was, waiting for a reaction and praying that she wouldn't get one.

She did.

A swirl of black appeared at the other side of her desk, dark and menacing, and Neal was standing there when it cleared. His face was as pale as hers probably was, jaw clenched in that way it did that time she'd gotten hurt in a getaway and he'd been so damn _scared_.

"You're…" She couldn't say it-couldn't say the words-but it felt like her world had just shattered. Everything she knew. Everything that had made sense. Neal was _good_ , but he was a…

"Don't say it," he whispered, almost pleading.

"How…"

He didn't say anything for a few minutes. He just shook his head at her, fingers running through his hair as he started to pace until he stopped and slid down the wall. Ass on the floor, knees pulled up towards his chest, and she could see the harsh way his Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. "My dad…"

"Gold did this?"

"No." He wouldn't look at her. She moved towards him like it would force him to look up, but all it did was make him flinch. "Put it down. Please…"

She dropped it like it had burned her and it clattered back down onto her desk. He sighed, relieved. She wondered if this would actually make her throw up. She thought it might.

"He didn't do it on purpose," Neal murmured. "I don't even think he knows."

"What did he _do_?"

"I don't know. Everything just… I think it was from taking me in him. Like… I absorbed it or something." He sighed, his breath ragged, and she knelt down beside him. "When we split… I think it made two. Two...people. Two daggers."

"You knew."

He nodded, eyes closed. She was close enough to see the shame cross his face. "After the woods… Something felt different. I thought it was just leftover magic, but I got mad one day and I…" He stretched an arm out in front of him, trembling, and fire erupted in his palm. The colors shifted like it wasn't stable until it finally disappeared, but he didn't pull his arm back. "I made that. Kept thinking I just had magic now or something, but I felt it. The dagger."

"It showed up on my desk. I didn't touch it until I…"

"I know." He cringed. "I would have felt it."

She nodded, a lump in her throat, and wondered if she should try pinching herself again. Maybe it would work this time.

"I felt it. Before. It's been...forming or something. I don't know." His voice cracked at the end and she grabbed his hand. He felt even colder than the metal had. She shifted closer like it would force it out. Like it would force the _curse_ out.

It didn't.

She sighed just as heavy and ragged as he had and shifted until they were sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, their joined hands in her lap. "I separated you."

"It wasn't your fault," he told her as he finally turned his eyes towards her. "I think it was gonna happen no matter who did it."

"You were going to die."

"What do you think saved me?" he asked, but something about his voice was strange, darker than she'd heard before. Bitter. Defeated. It made her drop her eyes away from him.

She did remember. She remembered holding him in her arms and knowing that he was dying. She remembered him talking and saying goodbye without ever saying the damn word until his breath stopped and he was staring up at nothing. She remembered crying and feeling like something inside her had just broken forever.

She remembered the startled gasp and dropping him into the dirt when he woke up.

They'd been so relieved back then that they'd never really questioned it. They'd counted it as some kind of mystery and left it at that, because Neal was alive, but Zelena was still a threat. By the time she wasn't, Neal being there was so normal that they'd forgotten that he should have been dead.

He wasn't dead. Her parents had a baby. Her and Hook started something that fell apart almost as soon as it started. Things happened. They stopped thinking about it.

"The curse…" He flinched and she sucked in a breath, preparing herself. "You're a Dark One."

She wondered if he'd ever let himself actually think the words since he'd realized something was happening to him, because the second she said it, something in him seemed to break. His breath cut off before it shifted into some kind of broken sob that made her chest hurt and his head dropped down, hidden in his knees.

In the scattered time she'd been with him, she'd never seen him cry. Not once. She'd never even seen him get teary-eyed at a movie. He'd taken his own father sacrificing himself with this forced sort of calm even though he'd been hurting and sent her and Henry over the town line the same way. He hadn't even cried the two times she watched him almost die. The portal. The woods. Not a tear or a glimmer of one. He'd always been so collected, but now…

She squeezed the hand she was still holding and laid her head on his shoulder. She wanted to say something- _anything_ -to comfort him, but the more jaded side of her knew there wasn't anything she could say to make this better. She'd read his story in Henry's book. Gold had taken the curse to save him as a child, and gave it a meaning, but there was nothing noble or brave in this. Neal hadn't taken the curse to save anyone. He had gotten it by _mistake_ , split a curse for one person between two or duplicated it, she didn't know, but he wasn't supposed to have it.

For a minute, she felt the anger rise in her chest, mad that Gold wouldn't have considered the danger of something like this happening when he'd taken Neal inside him in the first place. If he could absorb a _person_ , what was to stop the person from absorbing the curse?

The anger released seconds after she let herself think on it. Even if Gold had known what this would do, she didn't doubt he still would have done it. He never would have let Neal die and if Belle's explanation of it was true-and she didn't doubt it was-Neal would have died for real in the Enchanted Forest that day instead of bursting back to life in her arms.

He hadn't known it, but Neal had cursed himself the second he opened that damn vault.

The realization shook her and she reached for his other hand, turning his palm up so she could see the raised scar. It still looked as livid as it had the first time she'd seen it, like it might never quite heal, and she traced it as he shuddered.

"Emma…"

"Does anyone know?"

He shook his head, his breath not quite steady, but the sobs had tapered off. "Just you. My dad hasn't said anything."

"Take it," she said, decided. "The dagger. Hide it. If no one else knows, no one can use it against you."

"They're going to find out eventually, Emma," he sighed. "The magic… They'll feel it."

"And it'll already be somewhere safe. You _saw_ what Zelena did when she had Gold's." More than saw, she thought. He'd probably felt it too. God, she was going to be sick. "You need to protect yourself."

Lost eyes turned towards her and she let go of the scarred hand to touch his cheek. He leaned into it, his breath hot against her skin.

"I won't tell anyone."

It was a stupid promise. Stupid, reckless, and probably one that she couldn't keep. He knew that as well as she did. This was dark magic and a darker curse than the one that had sent everybody to this world in the first place. Neal had said himself that this changed his father into something darker and it could do the same to him. It could turn Neal into someone she didn't know, but…

She pulled back an inch to look at him and at the defeat and the fear and the self-hatred on his face. He'd become something he hated and it was like he'd given up. It wasn't right. Ever since she'd met him, he'd been someone that _fought_. He fought to get away from magic, to get back to his family.

" _I'm never gonna stop fighting for you. Never."_

He'd fought for _her_.

She angled herself up, pressing her lips to his forehead. Years ago, she used to do it all the time. His forehead. His temple. Their own little communication, just like when he'd let their noses brush. _I love you_. He knew. She knew. Some things with them would never change and as he breathed her name again, she knew he understood. She didn't need to say the words she wasn't ready to verbalize again.

He pressed his forehead to hers, their noses bumping softly. _I love you too._

She smiled. "I've got you," she murmured. "I'm stubborn. I won't let you go dark."

"I know," he murmured, swallowing. "I'll hide it, but… You need to know where it is."

"That doesn't exactly make it a secret hiding place, Neal."

"It makes it _safer_." He sucked a breath in through his nose and held it for a few seconds before he released it. "If something happens and I do... _change_ , you'll know where it is."

"And do what with it?"

"Control me," he said and she knew he meant for it to sound simple, but it felt like a punch to the gut instead and she pulled back. "If someone's going to do it-"

"You want it to be _me_?"

"Yes." That time, it came out simply, sounding like it was the first confident thing he'd said since this started. The only thing he knew for sure. He had faith in her and a trust that he didn't give to anyone else, one he might have been able to give to his own father if Gold's own curse might not corrupt the safety precaution.

"Okay," she said before she'd had a moment to realize she wanted to agree at all. "But I'm not touching it unless something happens."

He nodded, looking relieved, and she pulled him to her in a hug so he could hide his face in her neck. She pressed her lips to his shoulder.

"Just don't grow scales, okay?"

" _Emma_."

The End


End file.
